The Month of Qur’an & My Monthly

I was waiting all week for my period, but as Murphy’s law had it, there it was. Before Fajr. On the very first day of Ramadan. Alhamdulillah.

Counting my blessings

As a student of Qur’an, I’m extremely blessed that I even though for the past nine days, I couldn’t fast, I couldn’t make salaah or go to the masjid for tarāwīh, at least I could recite Qur’an. And that’s all that mattered to me.

This is because I appropriate the Maliki math-hab with regards to the ruling for reciting during menses. May Allah SWT bless Imam Malik! Rahmatullahi Alayhi. What would I do without him? As a visual learner, listening to recitation doesn’t help much. And the Qur’an is of such a nature that the memorisation doesn’t stay if not revised. It’s like building a wall only to break it down again.

I am grateful that in Cape Town this is the norm, and what most Qur’an institutes do, but in other parts of South Africa and the world, people are very strict about following their math-hab’s ruling.

Excerpt from Islam Question & Answer:

“Preventing a menstruating woman from reciting Qur’aan deprives her of the chance to earn reward, and it may make her forget something of the Qur’aan, or she may need to recite it for the purposes of teaching or learning.

…the evidence of those who allow a menstruating woman to recite Qur’aan is stronger.

If a woman wants to err on the side of caution, she can limit her recitation to the passages which she is afraid of forgetting.”